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Cybersecurity - An Integral Aspect of a Successful Enterprise

IT security is an approach to harden the perimeter of the data center to prevent the invasion of external factors; while providing access to users to fulfill the intended purpose of the software.

Cybersecurity has become an integral part of application building because protecting privacy is preserving human rights and freedom, especially to the application that connect to the internet or to each other. Cybersecurity should be implemented from the early stages of the software life cycle development process. The whole topic of security actually encompasses and embraces aspects like privacy, safety, protection, and defense. Some key aspects designers concentrate to ensure security in every level are

Security framework:

Designers will typically try to protect their customer assets against threats by implementing security measures. The main assets in a system that are vulnerable to attacks are data, code, device identities and keys. Developers identify their “customer assets” and categorize them into these categories at the semiconductor level. The key customer assets are physical or logical objects that have to be protected and also firmware that a user loads onto a device, data transmitted over a network or material stored on a device.

Risk assessment and security discovery:

Two steps for risk assessment and security are

• Qualitative risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities, potential threats, the probability of threat and measures required in case of a threat.

• Quantitative risk assessment to identify loss in case a threat is realized, such as mapping a dollar amount to a specific risk.

Attack surfaces:

The attacker poses three main types of threats

• The network: An attacker present at the location or in close proximity may use communication channel either wired or wireless to access devices to attack.

• The Board: The board threats target a printed circuit board (PCB) access and use any wired interface on the chip to gain access to sensitive data.

• The chip: The chip threat is a physical attack that infiltrates device access to perform integrated circuit decapsulation and deprocessing to gain access to the internal layers and elements of the chip

Network attacks

With a massive acceptance of IoT connected devices, network attacks are becoming more common. Networks topology provides numerous attack paths and a growing potential to identify an exposure point through which an attacker can reach the target asset. An attack from the network is less obvious, so the attacker has some level of anonymity over a physical attack. This is attributed to a number of aspects related to the fundamental nature of communication networks.

The most common types include:

• Tapping: Tapping is an act of checking the network at various points with tools that can eavesdrop, intercept, replay and impersonate anything transmitted over the network. In general, measures that can achieve confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of the transmitted assets or commands need to be implemented.

• Man-in-the-middle (MITM): There is an attack in which the attacker’s gains access of assets without being detected to relay and possibly alter the communication between two entities who think they are communicating directly with each other. An attacker can insert himself as a MITM into a network using unencrypted Wi-Fi access point within range.

• Distributed Denial of service (DDoS): This attack blocks the availability and accessibility of a resource by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic. A distributed DoS attack is a synchronized attack originating from multiple sources, thus making it harder to detect and block the origin or source of the attack.

• Malware: Malware is malicious software intentionally designed to cause damage to a computer, server, client, or computer network successfully delivered to a point with network access. On reaching the targeted point, the software may potentially attack that point either passively to monitor activity or actively to alter its behavior.

Exposure points: Points in a system where there could be a risk of attack or a way of entry for the attackers to gain access is called Exposure points. The three possibilities of exposure points are:

• Storage: The attackers can target keys, data or code potentially exposed at rest in external or internal chip memory.

• Run time: The attackers can target Keys, data or codes which are potentially exposed during run-time operations of the application.

• Transfer: The attackers can target data or code potentially exposed during transfer from/to a remote location. The transfer could be eavesdropped, intercepted or impersonated by the attacker.

Consequences of poor security

Poor security at a business place can lead to disastrous results like electronic theft, corporate espionage, loss of access, and legal liability for the business and its suppliers also. Addressing safety and security issues throughout the communications and electronic transactions will help to avoid problems that can affect a company and its stakeholders.